Sixth impression; hardcover with dust jacket, 8 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches, 383 pages, author photo on rear, orig price of $6.95 in front jacket flap. Turquoise cloth with gilt titles to spine and author initials to bottom front corner, boards edge worn with mild damp staining and bleached spots along rear fore edge, tiny split at tail of front internal hinge, pages toned from age, dust jacket rubbed and edge worn, strip of rubbing along center of spine, chipping at extremities with small chip and crease at top front edge, dust jacket now in protective mylar cover. Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, "modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean." He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work. It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people--a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic--who become the rebel movement's leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.